BPOs turn back on freshers

Says Sangeeta Lala,vice-president (sourcing),TeamLease,the countrys leading staffing company: We are seeing clients who look for experienced people now; they dont look for freshers anymore. Its only for the very basic level and bulk BPO jobs that the freshers are welcome. Most firms now have a 70:30 ratio in favour of experienced personnel.

According to industry experts,most freshers see BPOs as a stop-gap option. With better career prospects in retail,insurance,healthcare and financial services,most of them do not stick to their BPO jobs for more than a few months. This leads to high attrition costs in terms of expenses on recruitment process,salary and training and development.

Says Quatrro BPO Solutions chairman & MD Raman Roy,widely regarded as the father of the Indian BPO industry: Getting experienced people on board saves a lot of money for the organisation. You dont have to give them the basic training for six weeks,which includes the salary during the period and other infrastructure costs. They also bring in good practices. In our organisation,80-90% are experienced employees.

It is worth an effort to get an experienced candidate on board. Freshers come for six months and they run away. Other than the basic training cost,the attrition cost also comes down because people are there, says Sandeep Aggarwal,executive vice-president,sales,solution and transition,Intelenet Global Services.

According to Nasscom data,attrition rate for voice-based BPOs is about 55-60% and 15-20% for non-voice based processes. The outsourcing industry is expected to face a shortage of 2.62 lakh professionals by 2012,says Nasscom.

Keshav Murugesh,Group CEO,WNS Global Services,pointed out that the biggest challenge for the BPO industry is that only 10-15% students graduating today are employable due to inadequacy of academic programmes leading to lack of effective communication skills of employees along with the necessary soft skills. With a fresher,every company has to invest a lot in the initial period towards their general and process-based training,followed by a rigorous learning and development module to get them ready to work on a client process, says Murugesh.

Today,with the Indian BPO industry moving up the value chain,clients demand trained professionals. Panesh Rao,chief human resources officer at Aditya Birla Minacs,says: Clients are increasingly demanding an accelerated learning curve for the talent servicing their business. This,in turn,is increasing the demand for experienced talent. In order to create a quality workforce,IT-BPO firmsconduct training programmes to improve communication and leadership skills and domain expertise. According to a Nasscom-Evalueserve survey,about 87% BPO staff received training on communication skills,while about 81% attended training to enhance soft skills. Guruvayurappan PV,associate vice-president (HR),Omega Healthcare Management Services points out that in an international call centre,language training takes about three weeks,over and above domain training.

For complex processes,the gestation period is 60-90 days and shadow training for another 30 days. A company on an average spends about Rs 1-1.2 lakh per employee on training. The training procedure changes depending on the processes and the nature of work, he says. In a BPO focused on healthcare,an employee needs about six months training in medical coding; so,for competition,we have become a poaching ground as they are getting candidates ready for the floor. On an average,a company saves about Rs 40,000-50,000 if an employee is billable from day one, adds Guruvayurappan of Omega Healthcare Management Services,a BPO. Experts say in complex processes,experienced professionals are required.